Do you track the differences between resident and non-resident admission rates in College Kickstart?

As you’re well aware, your residency can have a significant impact on your chances of admission to a public university. While you’d think there’s always an in-state advantage, the unfortunate reality is that it’s often not because non-residents pay full tuition and that helps the institution balance its budget.

While most schools publish enrollment breakdowns by residency, far fewer report admission rates this way. Of the 127 public institutions in our coverage universe, we were able to uncover admission rates by residency for just 23. And of those 23, we’ve found five cases where the differences were extreme enough to change how a school is categorized based on admission rate alone.

This release of College Kickstart introduces new Resident and Non-Resident options for five institutions:

Institution

Admit Rate

(Overall)

Admit Rate

(Resident)

Admit Rate

(Non-Resident)

University of California – Davis

38%

33%

54%

University of California – Irvine

39%

33%

56%

University of California – Santa Cruz

51%

46%

76%

University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill

39%

52%

19%

University of Virginia

30%

44%

24%

Source: College Kickstart, Class of 2019

In each case, the difference in admission rate is large enough to turn a likely school into a target, a target into a reach, or vice versa. One particularly striking case is UNC Chapel Hill, where a North Carolina resident with strong academic credentials could consider the institution a Likely school, whereas a similar non-resident would have to consider it a Reach school.

To take advantage of resident and non-resident admission rates, select the appropriate entry from the school picker in College Kickstart.

A couple of thoughts:

If one of these schools is already on your list, update the overall option to the resident or non-resident option.

In cases where resident and non-resident admission rates are available for a school that also has departmental admission rates, you won’t be able to get the departmental admission rates by residency. Unfortunately, schools don’t provide that level of detail. We recommend choosing the option with the lowest admission rate.